>>Maybe so, but we all loved the orgy.

In California, Nevada and South Florida maybe.

Carol and I bought at the top of the Bubble and our house and land didn't cost as much as it would to build a new house of similar size with the same features on much cheaper land.

In two thousand and two we stayed with the friend of a friend in central Florida. He had recently sold a modest ranch home in San Diego and bought a much nicer home in Florida for half the money. He told me about the interest only mortgages and multi-million dollar 2000 square foot homes then. He said "Mark my words. Its going to crash and crash hard!".

The thing is the Government did encourage it. They used it as the economic engine to balance the tax cuts to the wealthy. They used it the same way Reagan used military spending. Trickle Down Economics is nothing more than wishful thinking. It is a fairy tail for "faith based" voters. The market is not worthy of faith. Nothing is automatic. Governing and regulation is hard, difficult work. We need to have our best people at the top. Not cheerleaders, B grade actors or beauty queen runner ups.

The reason that the banking crisis came about was twofold, yeah the backs skirted regulations and took a lot of unnecessary risks, but the real crisis was one of confidence. Paulson, Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush didn't have a plan for the eventual crash. They left it to the market, and though every financial bubble in the history of the world had eventually popped, they acted as if this one would not.

Faith based governance. I hope we have seen the last of it.